User Notes

Nov 08, 2012

Hello,

Is there a way to have users take notes through the player while they're doing their training? I see a notes tab, but it appears that it's not interactive. The goal is for someone that runs into trouble, or has a question to be able to just type it in somewhere and have it logged to that particular slide.

Anyway to do this?

Thanks!

31 Replies
Nancy Woinoski

Hi Spencer, I am not 100 percent clear on what you are trying to do.

I've attached a story file showing what I was thinking for this. In this example (which is very rough) I created a custom tab in the player settings which I called user notes and then added a trigger to the tab which opens a slide containing a text field in a lightbox.

Users can access the notes  from any slide in the course by clicking on the User Notes tab. Any notes the user enters in the text box on that slide will be retained.

Donna Morvan

Hello Spencer,

1. Just like what Nancy said, you can start by accessing the Slide Master. In the Slide Master, you can create the Text Box or "Notes Content Holder" so that you don't have to paste it over and over again on each of the individual slides.

2. Once you have done this, create your "text entry variables". In the sample that I posted, I renamed them to Notes1, Notes2, etc.. so you know which slide its from.

3. Insert your Data Entry in the individual slides - most likely on the "Notes Content Holder".

4. Set each text entry to equal the variables you have created.

5. Once you're done, you should be able to go back to the slide master and input the (e.g. %Notes1%, %Notes2%) references there.

***This may require a lot of formatting because you don't know how much notes they will be typing on there***

Does it make sense?

It's kind of tough to explain via typing! LOL

Hope this helps.

Donna

Nancy Woinoski

Hi Spencer, you would do this by clicking View on the Storyline toolbar and then select Slide Master.

Then add the text box to the slide layout you are using for the course (most likely the blank one) - place it exactly where you want it to appear on your slides. 

If you do this you will have to remove the text boxes that you have already added to the individual slides in your course.

Nancy Woinoski

Spencer, if you are familiar with slide masters in PowerPoint, they work basiaclly the same way in Storyline. Anything you place on a slide master will appear on all the slides in your course - If you are using a background image for, example, you could place it on the slide master instead of placing it on every single slide.

Nancy Woinoski

Carlos Rubinstein said:

Serendipity! I answered Spencer's other post a short while ago, with a similar solution. It occurs to me that you ma want to save the real estate of having the box on your base layer, and instead put it on a slide-out layer that shows or hides via triggers. A bit more coding, but more room for interactions.

Cheers,

Carlos

Carlos, you are right that is the best way to go. Another option that might work if you want more real estate is make the entire presentation wider by changing the story size settings that are found  under Design.

You could then move the text box over leaving you more space for the content.

It is best to change the size prior to adding content though because resizing after the fact can cause funny scaling results.

If you want to do this to an existing file, make a copy of your file first just in case you have to revert back to the original.

Rebecca Fleisch Cordeiro

Hi,

I was reading through this thread, and Carlos, I really love the solution you came up with: other post

I added a scrolling panel. It needs some work still. Here's why I did it:

I wondered what would happen if I typed "too much text" into the box. On the slide where you type, a scroll box appears, but, it disappears after you're done typing. So, it's not available on next slides. You CAN use arrow keys to move up and down in the box, but I thought I scrolling panel would be a bit easier.

It DOES work well when you do next/previous after typing, but it's a bit kludgy (I'm using Bruce's work - thanks Bruce) as your typing because you need to click in the box, deselect the text, and use the scroll arrows as necessary. Can anyone come up with a way to avoids that messiness? Otherwise, I think it's a good solution.

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